Starglass

by North, Phoebe

  “You’re coming to our quarters, aren’t you?” His lips were pursed, worried. He still couldn’t bring himself to tell me what to do. Which meant that I didn’t have to agree to it, right? So I didn’t. I walked off through the field, my boots sinking into the mud.

  20

  Our quarters looked the same. The same doorjamb where Momma had marked our heights with a pencil. The same familiar galley counters, where she’d kneaded dough while Abba cooked. The table where Ronen and I had fought—where he’d brandished a fork at me and I’d stuck out my tongue—until Abba had slammed his hands down and bellowed, “Enough!” In those days it hadn’t been scary. Not with Momma there. When she rolled her eyes, we all just giggled. Abba gave her a withering look. Until his expression lost its icy edge and he smiled too.

  It wasn’t the same place, not anymore. It no longer had the same heart. The people I loved were gone, and they’d taken my home with them.

  I went to my room. There was a basket under my bed where I kept my old school papers, notes from Rachel, a certificate I’d gotten when I was seven, for the highest marks in math, the only school honor I’d ever received. I dumped them all onto my blankets and then, working in silence, began to fill the woven container again.

  I took my pencils, of course. And my sketchbook. My work uniforms. The few sweaters that still fit me. Momma’s dress. And then I peeled the case from one of my pillows and got down on my hands and knees. Pepper was hunched up beneath the bed, his shoulders big and craggy, tensed in anticipation of my grasp.

  “Come on,” I said. The sound of my voice against the empty walls seemed to startle him. Pepper flinched, his tail arching up, and scrambled along the wall. I let out a sigh. Fetching Pepper would have to wait. Instead I slipped my hand between the mattress and rusted bed frame and pulled out the journal.

  My father had been looking for it just this morning. When he was alive. Now he was gone, and all that was left was the stupid book and the lie I’d told about not taking it.

  Black thoughts. My mind was flooded with black thoughts. They blotted out everything else like clouds of ink spreading across damp paper. I don’t remember falling to the ground, setting my head on the cold floor, and crying into my hair. But it must have happened. Because later, much later, I picked myself up, my face a snot-slick mess, dirty-blond tendrils sticking to my cheeks and my lips.

  I put the book in my basket. And I reached under the bed and grabbed my cat, ignoring the way his claws flexed as I stuffed him down into the pillowcase. I tied it closed behind him. Then I gathered my things and left the only home I’d ever known.

  • • •

  It was nearly dawn. The streets were dark and cold but not quite empty. Mar Schneider, dressed as he always was in a woolen tunic and a dusty tweed cap, sat on his front steps.

  He must have seen me, how my tears shone in the streetlights, how my hair was a tangled knot. Because I saw him. I braced myself, waiting for his apology. “So sorry about your father,” that sort of thing. But none came. He only touched two of his wrinkled fingers to his heart, saluting me. Then he turned away.

  I walked briskly. Not forward, to where Rachel and her parents lived in a bright home full of fashionable wall hangings and warm conversation. Not to the starboard district, where Koen and his parents fought over their galley table. Or aft, where Ronen and Hannah were probably pacing while Alyana screamed and screamed. No, instead I walked down the straight, narrow roads of my own district, the port district, the place where the specialists and teachers and librarians and lab workers lived. My feet found the path easily, though I hadn’t ever visited the quarters of this particular specialist before.

  I’d forgotten my gloves. When I pounded the heel of my hand against the door, the cold metal bit at my skin. Pepper let out a meow through the fabric of his pillowcase. But no one answered us. I knocked again, and this time I didn’t stop at three. I pounded and pounded and pounded, until at last the door swung open.

  In the dim light from the streetlamp, dressed in her pajamas and a too-big robe that had to be her husband’s, Mara Stone’s face seemed to be carved out of concrete. Her skin was gray and pebbled from lack of sleep. She just stood there, blinking at me.

  I opened my mouth, drew in a breath, and readied myself for my own sob story: I was alone now. I had nowhere else to go, not really, not anywhere with anyone who understood.

  “I need—” was all I managed. Mara held up a hand. She spared me that, simply motioning for me to come inside.

  Then she closed the door behind me.

  Autumn, 464 YTL

  Dearest Terra,

  We weren’t alone in our nostalgia, your father and me. By the time you were a child, I noticed how the ship’s passengers had begun to pepper their speech with snippets of Yiddish and Hebrew—the language of our parents and their parents before them. It was a comfort to recall our baby names and the songs our grandmothers had sung to us. Our nostalgia tied us more firmly to Earth than any decree ever could. Even I found myself guilty of this, singing as I combed the snarls from your hair: “Shaina, shaina maideleh.”

  The Council would tell you that this was natural and right—the perfect execution of the contract we had signed. We were preserving our culture, saving these ancient tongues from certain death.

  But I wonder if we shouldn’t have been more vigilant, if we shouldn’t have kept our minds on the future and our words circumspect. The past is a distraction—the Earth we left behind, kaput. All we have now is the present and the bleak, endless journey ahead.

  Early winter, 462 YTL

  My Terra,

  Perhaps the world within these walls won’t kill you like it does me.

  On Earth, even before we knew of the asteroid’s approach, there were several closed biomes. The TeraDome. The Arcosphere. BIOS-6. Experiments, populated with earnest students who were certain that their contributions would someday have a tremendous impact on the world at large.

  Little did they know that the world at large would soon no longer exist.

  I was asked to join one of these communities when I was in college. The ArcLab II. They needed psychologists—the first ArcLab project dissolved because of discord among its inhabitants—and offered me a scholarship in exchange for my services. I accepted, but then a few weeks later I met Annie. I dropped out. I couldn’t stand the idea of being apart from her for eight months. I thought that I had abandoned life under a dome forever.

  Will you laugh when, grown, you read of that? Clearly, we both know better now.

  Perhaps if I had lived in the ArcLab II, I would have never boarded our ship. I would have known the claustrophobia that presses down on me whenever I let my gaze drift up above the treetops, the way that I have to swallow the water quickly here before I can think of how many times it’s been recycled, the way that even the air smells overused—stale. But I knew none of these things until we launched, and by then it was too late.

  I’ll be honest: There were times when I wanted nothing more than to hijack a shuttle, to trade this small space for another even smaller space. Times when I wanted to throw myself out of an air lock and go swimming in the airless stars.

  But I had you to worry about—my child. And your brother, too. Perhaps that’s why the Council demanded that we all be parents. Perhaps they knew how our children would tether us to this place.

  I’ve fulfilled my duties. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve grown obedient.

  Seven years into our journey I noticed how listless and sad the other citizens were becoming. Purposeless. I petitioned the Council to let us use animal DNA from storage.

  At first they denied my request. “What need do we have for pets?” they asked. They called the idea frivolous. I explained to them all the ways that animals could be therapeutic—how caring for creatures has long been known to lead to longer life spans, better health. They denied me again. I was enraged. This was my vocation, my job—the job they had given me. And they wouldn’t even let me do it.
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  Finally your father intervened. He started a petition. Staged protests. Soon citizens were visiting us to speak of the animals they’d left behind. They were so lonely without little Barney, without Sampson, without Tilly, that good old mutt.

  Daughter, you might scoff. It may seem like such a minor thing to you. Pets. At first the Council thought so too. Until we stormed the Council antechamber with our demands.

  Only then did they give in. Of course, even then they insisted that these creatures be useful in other ways—pest control.

  At long last we awoke fat calicos. Rat terriers. Dachshunds. Companions. Creatures we could care for and care about. Creatures that would depend on us and give us something to look forward to on every new, dark, stifling morning.

  Daughter, heed my warning when I say this: Don’t trust the Council.

  Every comfort you’ve had was one for which we had to fight—even Alfalfa, your yellow dog who curled at the foot of your bed every night until he was old and gray-muzzled. If the Council had their way, we would live a life of bread and water and nothing else. They’ll tell you that they have your best interests at heart. I’ve come to suspect that they truly believe this. They can lie to themselves. Please, daughter, don’t let them lie to you.

  PART THREE

  ARRIVAL

  DEEP WINTER, 6 WEEKS TILL LANDING

  21

  I slept on the floor in Mara’s daughter’s room. Her name was Artemis and she was only eight, and she talked in her sleep every single night, calling out for her mother, who never came to comfort her. Pepper was able to sleep through it, but I never could. I stared up at the ceiling, counting my breaths up through the thousands. There was no one left for me to call for.

  In the morning I ate breakfast with them. Mara’s husband, Benton, was a dark-skinned man with bone-white hair, and he read books every morning at the table through a pair of tiny spectacles. Artemis was more like him than like Mara—dark and soft-spoken and polite and largely distracted. But Apollo, who had just been bar mitzvahed, was cut from the same cheap cloth as his mother. At the rare times I tried to speak to him, he’d just roll his pale eyes or let out exasperated syllables. Once his father chastised him when the boy called me “a speck-brained fool.” Mara smiled wryly at that, even as she let her husband scold him.

  It was the only time I ever saw her look pleased to be a mother. After scarfing down her breakfast, she’d leave her dishes steeping in the gray water for her husband to wash, and rush off to work before I’d even finished my coffee.

  That didn’t matter, though, because I’d stopped going to work when my father died. I didn’t ask to play hooky, and Mara didn’t offer. It just happened. Every day she rushed off. Benton bundled up his kids and then went to work himself. He was a fieldworker. I couldn’t believe that. The Council had paired Mara Stone with a farmer. I was left alone to consider that every morning at their kitchen table.

  I developed a kind of routine. After breakfast I fed Pepper. Then I’d go up to Artemis’s room and curl up on my sleeping roll. I wouldn’t shower; I almost never changed my clothes. I’d take the ancient journal from my basket of belongings, clutch it against my body, and sleep.

  I hoped to dream of Momma. I wanted her to take me by the hand, walk with me through the dome, and tell me what to do now that I was alone. I wanted her to give me answers: Why had my father taken his life? What had she been doing with the Children of Abel?

  She never came. Instead I would be plunged into whiteout storms, the snow piling deep and burning cold around my bare knees. My dreams always started the same way: I’d stumble forward barefoot, lost, the wind doing a fickle dance around me. And then, just as I was sure I’d be swallowed up, a hand would reach out, grasp mine, and pull me forward. Lips would meet lips, and it was summer inside me, the smell of clover and magnolia sticky on the air. In my dreams we burned the winter away.

  I woke only when Artemis stumbled into her room after school to put away her bag.

  “Oh,” she’d say, giving me a polite smile as she ducked out. “Sorry.”

  But there were other days. Dark days. Days when I couldn’t sleep, much less escape into dreams. I’d leave that ancient book sitting on the floor, and let Pepper sit on the pages, and wheeze out tears. There were no kisses. There was no love. There wasn’t even snow. All that was left was me, and I was alone.

  On those days, on those low, dark days, Artemis would open her door, hear my sobs, and let it shut again, leaving me to my pain.

  • • •

  One afternoon Mara came home early.

  I didn’t hear her come in. It was one of my good days, and I’d been dozing, flashes of lilac and fuchsia exploding beneath my eyelids. Mara grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. I let out a cry. The space inside my covers was warm and welcoming, while both the air outside and Mara’s grimace seemed dangerously cold.

  “No,” she said, gripping my shoulders, pulling at the fabric of my shirt. “Wake up, Terra.”

  I tugged the blanket over my head. But Mara just snatched it down.

  “Hey!” I whined. I tried to wrestle the blanket from her clutches. But she held on tight. At last I sat up, staring at her. “What do you want, Mara?”

  “It’s time for you to get up.”

  “My father died.” I spat the words at her like they were made of acid. But she didn’t even flinch.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s time for you to get up and tend to your duties. It’s been two weeks. You have work to do.” When I didn’t answer, crossing my arms square across my chest, she gritted her teeth.

  “What’s that term your father was so fond of, girl? Mitzvah?”

  I could feel it, how my gaze flickered when she said it, how tears suddenly stung my eyes. But I didn’t want to give in. I couldn’t! I couldn’t imagine going out there and facing the light of day. “What good works can I possibly owe the people on the ship?” I asked through my scowl. “Why should I help them fix the whole damned universe? What did they do to stop my father from—”

  I stopped midsentence, unable to make the words move past my mouth. For a moment, too long a moment, I sat slack-jawed. Then I found myself bringing my hand to my cheek and smearing away a long stream of tears.

  “Oh, Terra,” Mara said, tipping her head to one side. I hadn’t wanted to do this in front of Mara. So far, other than that the first night, I hadn’t. But here I was now, weeping openly while she forced a smile of sympathy across her sour mouth.

  “I don’t know why it happened to him,” I said at last. “And Momma. I don’t know why. No one else’s parents . . . It’s not supposed to happen here. Every other family is just perfect. A mother. A father. Two kids. Even your family. But he . . .” I sucked in a sharp breath.

  “You know, Terra,” she began, speaking slowly. “The founders of our society were very careful to control for certain things. So you’re right. What you’ve faced in life is rare—in our entire history few Asherati have ever had one parent struck down before they’ve reached marrying age, much less two. But no matter how carefully the original passengers were selected for resilience, no matter how many counseling sessions I’m sure they made your father attend after your mother’s death, you can’t control for sadness, not totally. You can’t control for grief.”

  “Or cancer,” I said, not wanting to mention that my father had stopped attending counseling after only a few weeks. He’d pulled me and Ronen out too. We’re fine, he’d told them. I know what’s best for my family. “Momma’s cancer. They couldn’t control perfectly for that, either, right?”

  Mara pressed her lips together. “Mmm,” she said. After a moment she reached up and cupped her fingers around my chin. Part of me wanted to squirm away, escape her touch.

  But I didn’t. I let her run her thumb along my tear-slick jawline. “You’ve lost something. We can’t deny that. But this loss will make you a stronger person.”

  “No!” The protest came out weak, shaky. Mara squeezed my jaw a little
more firmly with her fingertips.

  “Yes, it will.”

  With that, she stood, staring down at me. I wanted nothing more than to sink down in bed, snuggling into the blankets and closing myself to the world. But I couldn’t—not with Mara watching me.

  “Now,” she said. “We’ll start slowly. You’re going to get up. Shower. Get dressed. And then come to the lab with me. That’s all you have to do. Come to the lab.”

  She spoke easily, but we both knew that it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command. I had to obey. Without another word Mara turned and walked out. I waited a moment, sighed. Then I stumbled to my feet.

  22

  That day in the lab I sat behind Mara as she fiddled with her microscope and entered numbers into her computer terminal. At first I felt nothing but anger at my return to the messy, cramped laboratory. The only place I wanted to be was deep under the covers, hiding myself away from the world. But Mara didn’t push. In fact, she didn’t even speak to me. Instead she went about her work in silence, pecking steadily away at the keys.

  “You’re not going to give me something to do?” I demanded.

  Mara didn’t lift her eyes from the screen. “There are always slides to prep.”

  I had no desire to prep slides, and Mara knew that. But I went to my work desk and began to set out my supplies anyway, making a show of slamming my desk drawers, hard, rattling the tools within them. I stooped over, blade in hand, and set to work.

  Soon my anger receded. But it was only replaced with interminable boredom. Setting my knife down, I rolled my head on my neck, counting the rivets on the metal ceiling. I turned to stare at Mara’s bookshelves, trying to make poetry from the titles on the spines. But there was no poetry to be found in Varieties of Lichen in Eurasian Boreal Forests. At last, unable to stand it anymore, I pulled myself to my feet and dragged myself over to Mara’s desk.